What better way to encourage young writers than to provide creative inspiration and the time to follow it?
That’s exactly why we’ve created this list of writing prompts for kids.
Whether you’re a teacher, a parent, a writer of kids lit, or someone who knows a young storyteller, you know it can’t hurt to have a supply of story ideas.
But since many of the lists created for adult writers aren’t suitable for young readers, it makes sense to provide lists of quick writing prompts they’ll find more relatable.
55 Fun and Creative Writing Prompts for Kids
It doesn’t mean you can’t address universal concerns. But story starters for kids should couch those concerns in a context they’re more likely to find familiar.
The same goes for journal prompts for kids. If you want to stimulate their imaginations, it makes more sense to trigger a memory they already have, so they can build on it.
Enjoy the following creative prompts and share them with the young writers in your life, as well as anyone you know who writes for children.
Fun Writing Prompts for Kids
1. Write a story that begins with you waking up as a dog — and your dog waking up as you.
2. What would you do if someone gave you $1,000 and asked you to spend it all in one day? And what would happen the day after?
3. Your new best friend is an alien, and you want to protect them, but their impulsive behavior keep drawing attention.
4. You make a wish on your birthday and wake up with the superpower you’ve always wanted. What is it, and what happens?
5. If dogs took over the world, what would they make people do? And would you help them?
6. After finally eating your vegetables, you discover a fun but disruptive superpower. And the neighborhood bully doesn’t recognize you.
7. A strange creature follows you home, and you let it into your room through the window. What happens? And what does it eat?
8. You build the best snow fort ever. But when you climb inside and later climb out again, the world around you has changed.
9. You write and read aloud a story for English class, and your teacher reacts strangely to it, fidgeting nervously and asking to be excused. Why?
10. You save a tiny creature from the neighbor’s cat, and it grants you one wish. More than anything, you want your parents to see you as you are.
11. Your cat wakes you by sitting on your chest, staring in your face, and saying, “Boo!” He’s always wanted to say that. But he needs your help.
12. Small gifts for you come in the mail from an anonymous “friend.” One of them is a key and a clue that will lead you to the right lock.
13. You’re given a choice of three wrapped gifts, and you can only choose one. The giver is an eccentric old relative who is testing you.
14. You’re a talented young coder who’s developed a revolutionary AI app that can show you what your life would be like if you changed certain details.
15. You find an artist’s rendering of a famous witch and see a striking resemblance. When you look into it, your mother warns you to keep it secret.
16. Your dad attributes a prophecy to one of your ancestors. It concerns you. And answering the call could cost you everything.
17. One of your ancestors hid people from the Spanish Inquisition. They worked on the inside to hide accused witches and heretics and get them to safety.
18. A classmate pushes you into the pool and your body reacts by changing. You don’t see the gills, but you do see the fish tail that replaces your legs.
19. You climb to the top of a high mountain and see something above the clouds. It’s not a bird or a plane. And it’s heading right for you.
20. You create a new vegetable in your secret lab. It tastes like your favorite food. Things get even more interesting when men in black suits show up at your door.
21. Your uncle offers to pay you $5,000 to live on his boat for a month. In spite of your motion sickness and fear of drowning, you accept.
Creative Writing Prompts for Kids
22. For some reason you can hear and understand the language of bugs. So, you’re your dad gets the pesticide out, you hear the cries and rush out to stop him.
23. You find a ring on the way to school, and when you wear it, strange things happen. After the third time, you find you can’t remove it.
24. You go to get dressed, and all your clothes have been replaced with superhero suits. You ask why, and your dad tells you to suit up.
25. Every morning, you wake up to something new under your pillow. Early one morning, you see a light underneath your closet door.
26. You find the diary of a grandmother you’ve never met, and it changes everything. Your adoptive parents kept the diary but have never tried to contact her.
27. You find $100 and are torn between giving it to your parents and keeping it for something you want very much. It’s not for yourself.
28. You win a tour of a top secret lab and you take something home with you. That something could make you a danger to your family.
29. Nukes are on the way, and the classroom bully knows the only safe place. Somehow, you inspire him to save as many as possible.
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30. You spend $5 on a grab-bag from a bookstore and one book makes it worthwhile. It’s a book of magic. And the author’ s name is familiar.
31. Your teacher connects you with a new pen pal, who sends you an unusual gift. It’s a medallion that he asks you to “keep safe” until he comes for it.
32. A new shop in town is hiring people your age, and you apply. Turns out, you’re just the kind of person the shop-owner is looking for.
33. You get up for breakfast and there’s nothing to eat but ______. You hope the school’s menu will be better, but they’re serving the same thing.
34. Your Secret Santa gets you a backpack that seems ordinary at first. But whenever you look inside, you find something you were thinking about.
35. A strange, recurring dream has made you suspicious of a friendly new neighbor. You tell your parents, who insist on inviting that neighbor over for dinner.
36. An estranged relative leaves a package for you. Your parents are not pleased and toss the package, but you recover it and take it with you to school.
37. A new musician in town is having a strange effect on local politics. Whenever anyone hums the tune, they go into a trance-like state.
38. You’re afraid your mom has totally lost it. But she’s just remembering what she is – and what you are. And one day, she tells you.
39. A door-to-door salesman comes to your home while your parents are out. You use the front door video interface to question him.
Middle School Writing Prompts
40. Your worst school-related fear happens on your first day of school. Then you wish yourself invisible and vanish. What happens?
41. You win a personal robot who calls you their “boo.” Their attempts at making you popular have disastrous results.
42. You have a therapy pet dragon who can’t breathe fire but has other (messier) powers. They protect you from all threats (real and imagined).
43. You’ve decided crushes are the worst. How do you come to this decision, and what do you do about it?
44. Your Phy Ed teacher insists on fitness assessments. This time, you surprise him by doing everything better than anyone else (including him).
45. In spite of your fear, you stand up for your new friend, who’s a transgender female. And you learn something about yourself, too.
46. A former tormentor defends you against a racist teacher, and you become friends. You later defend them when a former friend acts out.
47. You somehow trade places with a classmate who has homophobic parents. In learning more about them, you learn how to stand up for yourself and for others.
48. A new friend confides in you that he was adopted and is trying to find his mother. As far as they know, that mother was sent back to her native country.
49. Your teacher gives a passionate speech on U.S. supremacy, and you ask a question. That same teacher does something to retaliate.
50. You’re writing a report on iron pyrite—”fool’s gold”—and it leads you to a new shop and a new passion. Your friends teasingly call you the “rock whisperer.”
51. A neighbor is selling their organic produce from a stand, and a neighborhood bully threatens to report them. You step up and offer to buy everything.
52. Your dog has had enough of your middle school drama and lets you in on a secret. The reign of humans is coming to an end.
53. Your training in sign language comes in handy when a deaf student joins your class. You interpret for them in class, and the two of you become inseparable.
54. The new principal targets a friend of yours as a potential terrorist. You call him out for his ignorance, and he suspends you for insubordination.
55. Your favorite teacher pays you in movie tickets for your help in the classroom. During a movie, you witness something unsettling at the local theater.
How will you use these writing prompts for kids?
Thank you for taking the time to look over these story ideas for kids. If you know some young creatives or writers of kids lit who would benefit from them, please pass them on.
You can also encourage them to share their work — with you, with their online writer connections, and with sympathetic minds at school.
And if you love writing for kids, I hope these writing prompts get you started on a story your readers will love and share.
While you’re at it, check out other posts on Authority Pub for next steps in marketing, setting up ads, getting reviews, etc.
We’re here to help you excel in your writing career. May your words and actions today bring you closer to that.
